Many stacking devices are used to continuously create stacks of sheet products. In some common stacking devices, the sheets are fed from a feeding system to a first position of a starwheel that is rotated about a starwheel axis. The starwheel includes a plurality of blades or fins between which sheets are received to be rotated with the starwheel. Each sheet is fed into a slot having a width and formed between two adjacent fins, and each sheet is rotated within the starwheel to a second position where the sheet is stopped and thereby removed from the starwheel, such as by a barrier. The removed sheets can then be stacked upon a stacking platform or other structure to be carried away by a downstream conveyor of any type.
Existing feeding systems do not adequately feed sheets of web material into starwheels (particularly at high speeds) leading to sheet wrinkling or damage, increased scrap material and machine downtime and in some cases, poor stack quality. Existing feeding systems attempt to decelerate sheets as the sheets are fed into a starwheel by adjusting the width of the starwheel slots, thereby requiring the design and use of a different starwheel for each type of sheet. In light of the limitations of existing starwheel feeding systems, an improved starwheel feed apparatus would be welcome in the art.